What principles are you willing to pay a price for?

By ROY HARRYMAN

Bukovsky got booted out of the Soviet Union for agitating for democracy. He started being a problem for the state – get this – when he was 10 years old and quit the Communist Party. Its youth branch, Young Pioneers, required him to unjustly punish a classmate: He wouldn’t do it.

I’m sure he was partly pleased to leave his native land. But before the ejection he was imprisoned for 12 years in a labor camp and bogusly placed in a psychiatric hospital (a common way to torture dissidents).

When you read these lines from his essay, “The Soul of Socialist Man,” you can see why the Russians consider him dangerous:

"Why should I do it?" asks each man in the crowd. "I can do nothing alone."

And they are all lost.

"If I don't do it, who will?" asks the man with his back to the wall.

And everyone is saved.

Bukovsky’s resolve to pay a price for his convictions inspired and sobered me. I’d like to think I have convictions and ideals worth suffering for. But when push comes to shove, will I give ground?

How about you? What principles are non-negotiables, regardless of any retaliation or defamation you may endure?

Let Vladimir Bukovsky give you courage.

"Frankly, I don't care about the risk of being sent to prison. I have already spent 12 years in Soviet prisons having committed no crime in my life, I don't expect to live for very long, and it makes little difference to me whether I spend the final few weeks of my life in jail. However, what is fundamentally important to me is defending my reputation."